Kate and I bought Gulliver G, a
Nicholson 32, in summer 2006, when I was 28 and Kate was 27. The
purchase was entirely unintentional. At that time I had only
recently got back into sailing after a break of ten years or so due
to university and a new career and Kate’s only experience of
sailing was with me in a 22-foot drop-keel Seal Sinbad which we had
purchased just 4 months previously.

The plan had been to be very
sensible and sail the Seal for a couple of years before progressing
to a larger vessel. That plan got scrapped as soon as we saw
Gulliver G on the hard on Hayling Island. I know a proper
boat when I see one and Gulliver G immediately re-ignited
long suppressed ambitions to go off deep water cruising. It was
love at first sight.

When we bought Gulliver
G, I was starting a training contract as a solicitor and Kate
was enjoying her career as a pharmacist. Dreams aside, we had no
immediate intentions to sail long distances and in those early days
simply getting in and out of our marina berth without damaging
anything felt like a massive achievement (OK, it still does!).
Crossing the Channel seemed worthy of a medal.

But, things move on…

An
Atlantic Circuit:

The purpose of this article is chiefly to
describe the preparations which went into getting our boat – and
ourselves – up to spec for our Atlantic circuit prior to leaving
the UK. Although everyone’s circumstances differ, taking a big
chunk of time out of work/everyday life is as much a part of the
planning and preparation as doing the antifouling, so I have
touched on how we went about it – though the primary focus
is on what we did to prepare Gulliver G.

By
‘Atlantic Circuit’, I mean sailing west from the Solent, down
through the Chenal du Four, across the Bay of Biscay to NW Spain
and from there down to Madeira, the Canaries and Cape Verdes before
crossing to Barbados. A few months’ cruising the Caribbean, and
then back to the UK via Bermuda and the Azores. A total distance of
around 10,000 nautical miles.

Kate helms Gulliver G on a
trip to the Channel Islands, 2010, before Geoff rows ashore on
Sark...

Initial
Plans:

Initial plans for the voyage started to take
shape around Easter 2010 when, after 10 years together Kate and I
got married. There were many matters to be taken into
consideration: funding, careers, what to do with the house, the cat
(the vicious beast was duly offloaded onto Kate's unsuspecting
parents), preparing the boat and ourselves.

Shortly after our return from honeymoon, in May
2010, I bought Les Weatherwitt’s Sailing Your First Atlantic
Circuit. This was soon joined by Jimmy Cornell’s World
Cruising Routes. It was evident that the best time of year to
cross Biscay would be summer, but that the Atlantic crossing should
be undertaken mid-November or later. We decided that a year should
be ample preparation time, and that the aim should be to have the
boat ready to cross Biscay in June 2011, with the onward journey
commencing October 2011. A key advantage to this timing was that we
were both on 3 months’ notice at work and did not want to resign
until we had got across Biscay, since that would be our first
passage spanning several days and nights, non-stop, and, despite
our commitment to the voyage, there was the possibility that once
we’d reached Spain we might decide that there was no way we would
cast our comfortable land-based lifestyles aside for a year at sea.
As it happens, both the Biscay crossing and the down-Channel
passage which preceded it were rough and wet, but that did not
dampen our spirits. Having crossed Biscay, we both handed in our
notices of resignation, timed to ensure mutual end dates of
30th September 2011.

The decision to put careers on hold was not easy
and I worried for a while about the effect of a break like this on
career progression. But, we are in our early thirties and decided
that if we did not crack on with the voyage now, it may become
something that we would never do. No-one I spoke to seemed to think
that taking 9 months or so out to fulfil a lifetime’s ambition
would be viewed as anything other than a positive by potential
employers on our return. After all, it demonstrates a willingness
to take calculated risk (giving up secure employment), an ability
to set and adhere to goals as well as planning and project
management skills. For all those true ‘free spirits’ out there this
may sound very droll and corporate, but any other ambitious
professional contemplating a break of a year or so to do something
entirely different will no doubt understand these
considerations.

Back to Spring 2010: it was evident that we had a
lot to do preparing both the boat and ourselves for the voyage and
that the deadline for these preparations had to be the beginning of
June 2011. The Nicholson 32 Association Cherbourg Rally was to take
place on 4th June 2011. We decided that we would
like to attend the Rally (not least as we were organising it) and
continue from there.

The
Right Boat for the Voyage:

Clare Francis sailed Gulliver G across
the Atlantic, and herself into the history books as the first woman
to sail across single-handed, in 1973. Having discussed with Clare
Francis some of her experiences in Gulliver G, we know
that she sailed the boat hard, unperturbed by gales and storms and
never eager to reduce canvas!

As well as having been across the Atlantic at
least twice already, Gulliver G has been in the Round
Britain Race two times that we know of and down to the Med. Many
other Nicholson 32s have been cruised throughout the Atlantic and
Pacific oceans and a number have completed circumnavigations. By
pure coincidence, in Porto Santo we berthed alongside
Orkestern, a Swedish owned Nicholson 32 Mark X
(Gulliver G is a Mark IV) whose previous owner completed
one and a half circumnavigations in her and whose current owners,
Filippa and Martin, plan to sail to Australia.

With their deep long keels and classic lines
(only 24’ at the waterline!), these boats may lack the living space
of modern 32-footers, but they more than make up for it in
sea-keeping ability and sheer strength. In the highly unlikely
event of an inversion, a Nicholson 32 will self-right from 165
degrees. Beyond that point she would only require the slightest
nudge to come back up again. This is unlike many modern designs,
which will float better upside-down than the right way up. Not that
the self-righting abilities of a Nicholson 32 from capsize have
ever been properly tested as none of the 400 or so boats built over
the last 50 years is ever known to have capsized. A number have
suffered knock-downs in severe conditions, but have always come
back up quickly, thanks to the narrow shape of the craft, low
freeboard and, high (compared to the freeboard) coach roof and the
3.5 tons of lead in the keel.

Clare Francis aboardGulliver G, August
2009.

Despite being 45 years old (built 1966) we have
never had any doubts at all that Gulliver G is exactly the
right boat for this – indeed, any – voyage. All preparatory work
involved improvements to what was already an incredibly sound and
seaworthy boat.

Nicholson 32 General Arrangement.

(c) Camper & Nicholson; scanned by the
Nicholson 32 Association.

Nicholson 32 Deck Plan.

(c) Camper & Nicholson; scanned by the
Nicholson 32 association.

Nicholson 32 Sail Plan.

(c) Camper &
Nicholson; scanned by the Nicholson 32 Association.

Preparing
Gulliver G:

Carriage

The first thing we did, in September 2011, was to
buy a beaten up old Citroen estate for a few hundred quid, Kate’s
transport being a BMW Z3 and mine being my season ticket for my
daily commute to London; equally useless for boat prepping. We live
in Princes Risborough, about 100 miles from Gosport where
Gulliver G was hauled out for the preparations, and with
the amount and size of tools, materials and equipment (such as boat
cushions, new ply boards for the headlining, new tender and
self-steering) to be carted back and forth we could not have
managed without. The Citroen proved a good workhorse, though it did
accumulate various mechanical and electrical problems as work on
the boat progressed.

On the Easter bank holiday 2011 we filled the car
to the absolute brim with variae for the final stages of the refit
only to find that the ignition wouldn’t work. Fortunately the
break-down man who came to our assistance had been thieving motors
at the tender age of 15. He showed us how to disassemble the
ignition switch and start the car with a pair of pliers. Apparently
one shouldn’t hotwire a car as there remains the risk that the
steering lock could come on at any time. As the door locks
generally didn’t work the car could have been stolen at any time,
but I didn’t think that any self-respecting joy-rider would stoop
so low. And they didn’t.

As if knowing that it’s purpose in life had been
fulfilled, the Citroen, which by that point was permanently leaking
oil, groaning from a knackered shock absorber and issuing strange
whirring and grirring sounds, died a complete and absolute death
the week after we had sailed Gulliver G down to Spain. So
ended our brief encounter with that emblem of the sensible classes,
the estate.

Key Tools and
Equipment

Tools:

a sturdy collapsible work-bench;

an angle grinder for removing an old anchor well (described
below; the GRP on Gulliver G is so thick that I actually
got through two angle grinders as the first one burnt-out half way
through the job);

wet and dry vac – cost about £70 and worth every penny;

halogen lamp (I did a lot of the below-decks work over winter,
when it seemed to be permanently dark. The halogen lamp had the
added advantage of giving out loads of heat);

circular saw and jigsaw for cutting wood;

cordless drill (very, very useful when it came to replacing the
headlining);

seemingly vast quantities of paint kettles, brushes and
rollers, including a metal roller for smoothing out GRP matt;
and

latex gloves, dust masks and disposable coveralls (essential
for grinding out old GRP).

Materials:

marine ply (18mm for the anchor well locker, 3mm for the
headlining);

the peculiar vinyl stuff that is used in many boats of a
certain age for headlining (i.e. lining the ceiling);

thin foam and blue velvety-type fabric for lining the sides of
the forepeak;

GRP chopped strand matt, tape and epoxy;

West System epoxy;

Sikaflex and other marine sealants;

lots of screws and various fixtures and fittings (any exterior
steel fittings must be 300 series marine-grade stainless available
from chandlers; the standard stainless to be found in high street
hardware shops and out of town DIY monoliths alike will rust as
soon as it is exposed to the sea air);

varnish;

locker and bilge paint;

antifouling and boot stripe paint;

two-pack paint for the deck and coachroof; and

loads of bin bags, paper towel and cloths.

Below Decks

The first job, starting in December 2010, was to
remove an anchor well in the bow which was designed to hold a
Danforth anchor. A Danforth is not much use for a vessel of
Gulliver G’s weight; the only time we deployed it the
shank bent by 45 degrees on the turn of the tide. Removing the well
involved stripping all of the lining out of the forepeak and using
an angle grinder to grind out the well, which protruded some way
into the forepeak.

I completed the job of removing the old anchor
well and sealing off the resultant hole with 18mm marine ply, which
I coated with fibreglass mat and epoxy, followed by more epoxy,
over three bitterly cold weekends. The temperature was dropping to
below freezing at night and, sleeping in the saloon on bare planks
(having removed all of the cushions), I had to wear ski socks and a
woollen hat in my sleeping bag. Grinding out the fibreglass well
produced huge amounts of fine, irritating dust, but the wet and dry
vac soon had it all sucked up.

The old anchor
well.

Epoxying the infill into the
deck.

Infilling the old anchor well –
view from below. The pipe was the ineffectual drain for the anchor
well; out it came and the skin fitting was blanked
off.

The reason for starting with the anchor well was
simply that I knew it would be the biggest and messiest single job
and I wanted to get it over and done with. Although the remaining
jobs were smaller, there were a lot of them and we had to work
flat-out for virtually every weekend from January to the end of May
to get them done. The aim was to ensure that Gulliver G
was completely clean and comfortable throughout, with no excess
junk.

As
soon as the anchor well was done we set about clearing the boat out
entirely. It is amazing how much stuff can accumulate on a 32
footer.

With
Gulliver G completely empty (and both our house and the
boatyard bins rather full), we set about sanding and re-painting
all of the lockers, both below decks and in the cockpit. More dusty
work. All of the cushion covers and the curtains went to the dry
cleaners and the foam cushions themselves allowed to air in our
study, which by this stage was impenetrable. We disposed of the old
lee cloths and had new ones made up by CJ Marine, who also cleaned,
re-stitched and re-glazed our spray-hood which had started turning
green but came back looking like new. Kate lined all of the lockers
with cork, intended to stop tins banging around and to absorb
moisture.

We
had decided that we would like to use the forepeak as our bedroom
when in port or at anchor, keeping the saloon free as a living
area. Previously we had always converted one of the settees in the
saloon into a double berth when in port and used the forepeak as a
dumping ground. We filled in the gap between the V-berths with a
‘V’ of 12mm ply and an additional foam cushion, so that the whole
forepeak became one large berth (on passage we hot-berth in the
saloon, using the leeward berth and a lee cloth).

The sides and ceiling of the forepeak were lined
with thin ply covered with vinyl, which was becoming rather tired
and mildewey. Using the old wood as a template I cut new 3mm ply.
For the sides of the forepeak we covered the ply with a thin foam
and on top of that a soft and cosy velvet-type material. We relined
the ceilings with fresh vinyl. I also sanded and repainted all of
the lockers in the forepeak.

Forepeak ready for relining.
Through the bulkhead is the anchor chain locker. The stringers were
added by a previous owner to strengthen the hull after some flexing
was observed in a Round Britain race way back in the
eighties.

Relined forepeak. The steel ring
in the top left of the picture was an anchor point for a lee-cloth,
now redundant as the whole forepeak is one massive berth (well, as
massive as anything can be on a Nic 32!).

Moving aft to the heads, I had what at first
seemed something of a dilemma: our boat was fitted with a Baby
Blake. New, these cost around £4,000. Some people, those without
Baby Blakes, I suspect, sing the praises of these bits of
antiquity. We always found the thing virtually impossible to
operate because it would get seriously stiff, however much
vegetable oil went down it, and when we did get the flush pump to
move it would spray seawater all over the heads compartment, making
the paint peel and everything turn green.

When we bought Gulliver G, in summer
2006, I spent a Friday afternoon going over the boat with the
vendor, Portway Yachts, and their local shipwright. We were
agreeing jobs to be done by Portway. Put a man in a boiler-suit and
he immediately has my full reverential respect. For this reason I
have been known to don a boiler suit myself when dealing with
matters mechanical: the attire somehow lends an infallibility to
any words which may be uttered in relation to the conundrum in
question.

The shipwright heaved at the heads’ outlet pump
and found it unsurprisingly immovable. I listened to him as if his
words carried the verity of those of the village vicar.

“That,” said the shipwright, wiping sweat
from his brow, “is very stiff.”

The
broker and I looked at one another as if a prohpet had spoken and
there was some hidden meaning to these words. But the truth was
simply that it was very stiff. And would forever remain
so.

A few months before our refit of Gulliver
G I spent £180 on a spare parts kit (essentially a bag of
washers) and many a tender moment stripping and re-building this
highly-feted wonder of British engineering. All to no avail. The
two parts which would need to be replaced to stop seawater spraying
out on each stroke of the pump would cost north of £1,000. The
local chandlers were selling manual Jabsco toilets for £99. These
toilets and parts for them are also stocked throughout the
Caribbean. Indeed, the local chandler advised me that his 1950’s
one-design wooden classic had boasted a Baby Blake which now
languished in his loft. I gave in to the voice of reason. Out came
the Baby Blake.

The
doors in the heads compartment were made of ply with a teak
surround. They had started to delaminate in places (presumably
being made of interior ply), so those came out too. My friend Will,
a furniture maker by trade, made up replica doors, complete with
teak surrounds, for £140. This is the best value work I have ever
had done on the boat. No doubt a shipwright would have quoted the
better part of £1,000 for the same work. They like to quote in
‘000s, shipwrights. The doors were ready the weekend before we set
sail to Cherbourg and I ended up fitting them over
there.

New door from heads to
forepeak.

New port-side doors in the freshly
painted heads compartment. Reflected in the left mirror is the
keel-stepped mast. The LED strip light above the doors is another
new addition.

New starboard locker doors in the
heads compartment. In front of them is the basin, equipped with a
(new) manual Whale ‘Flipper’ pump and a shower head which runs off
the pressurised hot and cold water system.

I sanded the heads compartment and it’s lockers
and repainted. They immediately looked a hundred times better and
fresher. For all paint-work below decks I used single-pack marine
paint. It does not cost much more than domestic paint, but is much
harder wearing and I suspect that as soon as any seawater gets
below decks domestic paint (by which I mean the paint that you
might use in your kitchen or bathroom) would turn green and start
to peel.

Plumbing in the new heads,
complete with new inlet and outlet hoses, was one of the last jobs
we did before re-launch, but was relatively straightforward. I used
a heat-gun to soften up the ends of the new hoses so as to get them
onto the tails of the seacocks. The outlet hose said on it ‘No
Alcohol.’ “Hmm,” I thought, “this could be a problem…”.

New heads – seat and lid
subsequently fitted!

All seacocks throughout the boat are now of ball
valve variety, apart from the outlet for the heads, which is a
solid bronze Blakes conical valve, in prime condition. It is
probably 30 or 40 years old, if not an original fitting.

I would highly recommend having any gate valves
(readily identifiable as being operated by round tap handles rather
than levers) changed for ball valves before setting out. Our last
gate valve, on a fitting well below the waterline, stopped working
a few years ago and was promptly replaced with a ball
valve.

From
the heads compartment we move back to the saloon. The Plastimo
Neptune stove (gas, two hobs with a grill and oven) was taken home
for a thorough clean-up. Everything that I have heard suggests that
gas is much more readily available around the North Atlantic than
kerosene or paraffin, so I would strongly recommend a gas stove.
All modern gas stoves will run fine on both propane and butane,
though different regulators are needed.

As mentioned, all soft furnishings were removed
late 2010 and the cushion covers and curtains went off to the dry
cleaners whilst the foam infils for the cushions were allowed to
air for a few months. Getting the cleaned covers back on the foam
involved an evening of brute force, tight squeezing and bouncing
around. Not quite as exciting as it may sound.

In
the saloon we sanded and repainted all of the lockers and replaced
a number of hinges on the locker doors. The latter was not
straightforward as the new hinges were not the same size as the old
ones, so the doors had to be carefully aligned. Hanging doors could
be an artisan occupation in itself.

On
passage across Biscay, in the perpetually rough weather, two of the
locker doors kept flying open, spewing tins over the saloon floor.
We found a new use for Jimmy Cornell’s World Cruising
Routes: wedged in hard, the thick tome helped to keep one of
the doors at least partially shut. The problem was easily fixed in
A Coruna by re-drilling the holes for the pegs which were supposed
to hold the doors closed. A nice, free and simple solution to
something which had to be fixed (the sound of tins rolling back and
forth across the saloon floor is maddening, they pose a health and
safety hazard and they will start denting one another in no time at
all).

An
incredibly expensive Weems & Plath barometer was fitted to the
bulkhead which leads from the saloon through to the heads. We also
added some additional teak book cases and other storage racks, all
of which came up very nicely with a couple of coats of varnish. An
EPIRB was fitted next to the companionway.

The
final significant improvement to the saloon was to run the thick
cable from our Aero6gen wind generator under the starboard bunk
rather than having it snake across the saloon floor. I will come
back to the question of power shortly. The only reason I mention
the cable at all is to make the point that the below-decks work was
very much focussed on ensuring that everything was tidy and
ship-shape, and would remain that way however much we got thrown
around.

Finally, aft of the saloon below decks, we
come to the cockpit lockers. These too we emptied of all kinds of
gunk, including leaking oil cans and slimy bits of canvas which we
inherited with the boat and had held onto ‘just in
case’.

Many
areas of the cockpit lockers on a Nicholson 32 are very hard or
near impossible for your average adult to reach, simply because
there is not enough space in which to manoeuver one’s torso and
limbs. Having experienced the panic of my upper body being
momentarily trapped in the starboard locker when routing some cable
a year previously, I was not about to repeat the mistake of sliding
too far in, so I sanded and freshly painted all those areas within
reasonable reach, all the while thinking that small children must
have been sent in to paint the less accessible areas when
Gulliver G was built.

Freshly painted aft deck and
cockpit. Note also the aft locker: fresh and clean. And a tight
squeeze! As a matter of interest for anoraks, the red keel behind
the green car belongs to another Nicholson 32, Araminta of Hythe,
who a few years earlier had completed the Azores and Back (‘AZAB’)
race.

Above Decks

Gulliver G’s decks and coachroof had
last been painted some years before we took ownership and were
starting to look rather tired, with much of the paint flaking off.
Sanding and re-painting the decks took four days and much careful
masking.

Sanding, always one of my least favourite
jobs, caused some angst amongst our boatyard neighbours. On the one
side was a young man who had taken over the maintenance of the
family’s immaculate 1970’s cruiser from his father and appeared to
have spent the previous week polishing the decks, hull and fittings
to within an inch of their lives. On the other was a much older man
with a small Beneteau whose hatches he insisted on keeping wide
open. Standing under our bows, from which a fine sprinkling of dust
drifted down with the breeze, he said: “It’s not very good, is
it?”

The
old man harrumphed and hobbled off. Thank God he wasn’t around when
I was grinding out the old anchor well, I thought.

Unfortunately, some jobs are messy which is
why boatyards are dusty and dirty. When we returned to the boat a
week after completing the exterior paint job, we found that it
already sported a discernable layer of boatyard
grime.

In fitting out for ocean cruising, firm resolve
and a degree of selfishness are required. If one were to constantly
try to keep everyone else happy, nothing would ever get done. These
observations aside, we completed the sanding as quickly as
possible, following the sander with the vacuum and I was concerned
afterwards that we may not have been thorough enough. But about six
months on, the fresh paint appears to be adhering. Note added
12th February 2012: coachroof paint is holding out much better than
the tosides, which were professionally resprayed four years ago and
have now started bubbling! I fear some tough discussions with the
yard are in the offing...

Gulliver G sporting fresh anti-fouling
and boot-stripe in the last rays of a winter’s day, Gosport
Boatyard.

Kate re-sealed one of the saloon windows, which
had been the source of a regular drip for a while. Keeping
everything dry down below, particularly keeping sea water out, is
really important. We packed all of our clothes in water-tight kit
bags to be on the safe side, but those will not protect bedding and
soft furnishings.

A
few weeks later we were in Cherbourg following the Nicholson 32
meet and it rained. In fact, it hammered it down. All day. And most
of the night.

The
window which we had re-sealed held up well – but now all of the
others leaked! So much water was dripping in that we had to put out
pots, pans and Tupperware to collect it. Fortunately that night we
were invited to a friend’s boat for dinner. The next day, we bought
plenty of Sikaflex and went about sealing the windows. The result
was not particularly pretty, but has proved waterproof even with
copious green water over the coachroof.

How
the seals on all of the windows could suddenly have gone is a
mystery to me, but we counted our lucky stars that we found out in
Cherbourg rather than out at sea in thick weather.

The
only other above-decks job not mentioned below was giving the
winches their annual service. We will probably service them more
regularly on this voyage, however, as they will be working somewhat
harder than most years. The main jib sheet winches mounted on
either side of the cockpit are Gibb 9CRs and were definitely on the
boat when Clare Francis owned her, so they are at least 38 years
old, but may be quite a bit more than that. It always amazes me to
find, when we open them up, that inside they look as good as new,
the teeth on the cogs sharp as ever. Maybe things really were made
to a better standard in the olden days.

How many
modern winches would look this good stripped down? (Please excuse
the garish background!)

Nice
pawls!

Kate
concentrates on the job at hand.

Rigging and Rope

Gulliver G has a bermudan rig with
Furlex roller reefing for the jib. The mast is a newish-looking
Selden. The boom is an old Proctor which does not match the mast at
all, being the golden colour of 60’s and 70’s anodised spars, but
is engineered as if it were intended to be mounted on a Sherman
tank.

The
one job which we wanted to carry out concerning the rig was the
addition of a detachable inner forestay. The main reason for
wanting this new stay was to carry our old hank-on storm jib, which
is the age of Gulliver G, but in pristine condition and
strong as an ox, save for the old bronze hanks we’d had replaced a
couple of years earlier. We had never deployed the storm job in
anger, yet it concerned me that in gale or storm force conditions
the handkerchief of main jib which one dared unroll would be
way too high above deck for comfort. Also, furling systems are not
infallible, so it seemed sensible to be able to carry and hoist a
No 1 hank-on genoa.

Gulliver G’s mast had been
unstepped when she was hauled out for the general refit and laid
atop Gosport Boatyard’s mast storage shack, where it proceeded to
accumulate a thick layer of grime. The proprietor of X W Rigging
came and met me at the boatyard in March 2010 and we climbed up
onto the roof of the shed to see what needed to be done.

“You’re not used to heights, are you?” he
said.

“Er,” I said, stiff-legged and ready to grab
onto, fixed or otherwise, anything in the event of a tumble as the
rigger marched along the duck boards.

I
wondered how hard hats would help in the event of a fall whilst
simultaneously considering that I had never seen anyone wear a
hard-hat or any other form of safety equipment within the vicinity
of the boatyard (staff in the commercial marinas seem to be
required to don a life jacket before getting within 10’ of the
water, though the old timers never bother to clip them up
properly).

This
rang true, if only from the number of signs scribed in the manner
of bylaws around the boatyard and it’s jetties which all ended in
the legend “- by order, CJ Haddock, Managing Director.”

Swallowing hard, I tried to blot out
the fact that we were over six feet above ground and followed Paul
to the base of the mast.

“How
old’s the standing rigging?” he asked.

“Probably around ten years old,” I said. I
knew what was coming, for I’d read in a number of places that
standing rigging, which is the wires that hold up the mast, should
be replaced every ten to fifteen years.

“Well,” said Paul, “for a voyage like yours
you should really replace the standing rigging, particularly if you
don’t know how old it is.”

“I
thought that it looked OK. Ish.”

“You
can’t tell and won’t know until something snaps.”

I
did not take much convincing as, sturdy though it seemed, the
vintage and fitness of the standing rigging had been weighing on my
mind. A dismasting mid-ocean is perhaps one of the worst fates
which could befall a sailing vessel.

By
the time Paul and I had finished going over the mast and rigging
the agreed jobs were: add a detachable wire inner forestay; replace
all standing rigging like-for-like; add a new hole in the mast for
an additional halyard (we had a spare block at the top of the mast
and it seemed daft not to use it for an additional spare halyard);
add two spinlock clutches on either side of the mast above the
winches (these are a Godsend as they keep the winches free once
halyards have been tightened) replace all running rigging (the
topping-lift and the various halyards) with cruising dyneema, all
12mm apart from the topping lift which is 10mm. I should clarify
that Gulliver G is different to many yachts in that the
halyards do not run back to the cockpit but need to be handled at
the mast.

Dyneema is a seriously strong and expensive
rope, so it is reassuring to know that our halyards are made of it,
but we carry all of the old halyards as spares.

The
cost of the works to rigging ran to about £4.5k – after I had
wrangled a respectable discount – but so long as one can afford new
standing and running rigging, I would not recommend going without.
If renewal is outside the budget, I would at least suggest getting
a rigger to take a look at what you have and to identify and
rectify anything which may be likely to prove an Achilles heel.
Many may consider Dyneema a luxury, but even new halyards of
traditional braid would be far preferable than relying on those
that have got you around your local cruising grounds for the last
few years to get your craft across the Atlantic.

Sails

Gulliver G had a fairly new Jeckells
roller-reefing jib, an identical jib which had been ripped in a
Round the Island Race misdemeanour a few years previously (caused
by a fellow competitor who managed to sail straight under our bows
despite being the give-way vessel) and a rather baggy
fully-battened main, as well as seemingly unused storm jib and
trysail.

We
had the torn roller-reefing jib repaired as a spare. North Sails
made us a beautiful new fully-battened mainsail designed for ocean
cruising, allowing us to carry the old main and battens as a spare.
Battens are hard to stow, being rather long, so we lashed them to
the deck, held down by the liferaft and tender. North Sails had
recommended stowing them inside the boom, but on our ‘maiden’ (post
refit) voyage to Cherbourg we found that they worked their way out
and, in any case, were concerned that they may become entangled
with the reefing lines.

We
also carry the boat’s original (1967) storm jib and trysail, a much
more recent cruising chute with a sausage-style stowing system and
a hank-on No 1 genoa for the detachable inner forestay. The new
main alone was about £1,200, but well worth the
investment.

We
replaced the jib-sheets, carrying the old ones as spares, and also
replaced the three reefing lines for the main with new Dyneema
lines, again stowing the old as spares.

An
old hank-on jib for flying on the detachable inner-forestay only
cost about £175 from Sea Teach, from whom we also obtained a
lightweight telescopic pole for poling out either jib or cruising
chute.

An
essential element of any block and tackle system is… well, the
blocks. Over the years Gulliver G had accumulated an
horrendous array of plastic blocks. During the refit I was
delighted to find that our local chandler, YouBoat, stocked a good
range of Gibb blocks, which have been out of production for a long,
long time, but which suit a boat of Gulliver G’s vintage
down to the bulwarks. They are also immensely strong, being as
over-engineered as our Gibb winches and made of a seemingly
indestructible material called ‘Tufnell’. I really don’t understand
why they are no longer made. We blew about £400 on new Gibb blocks
from the old stock, carrying the previous blocks as spares (we also
have a lot of spare shackles; along with the blocks, lines and sail
needles and thread these make up the hard-core of our rigging
spares).

Steering

Gulliver G has a tiller, which I most
definitely favour over a wheel on a 32-footer. You know where you
are with a tiller and since it is directly connected to the rudder
stock, there is a lot less to go wrong than is the case with a
wheel and it’s wires.

Tillers lend themselves to wind-vane
steering gear, so it is perhaps no surprise that many Nicholson 32s
sport Aries or similar on their sterns. When Clare Francis sailed
Gulliver G across the Atlantic she had a Gunning fitted.
An old boy in Dover Harbour, who recognised our boat from years
gone by, explained that Gunnings were complex affairs made by some
ex-Naval chap by the name of, unsurprisingly, Gunning, but when we
acquired the boat she bore no signs of this gear.

I
researched wind-vane steering quite a lot on the internet but could
find no mention of the Gunning, so decided to see if I could find a
decent second-hand Aries. They are still made by a chap in Denmark,
at a price of around £3,500, but the original Aries were so
over-engineered that most of those built in Cowes on the Isle of
Wight in the 1960’s are still going strong. They remind me a bit of
the story of the 1950’s electric milk-float manufacturer whose
build quality put the company out of business: the milk floats were
so tough that they never needed to be replaced and continue to ply
their trade to this very day.

EBay
beckoned…

We
found an Aries with a ‘Buy It Now’ price of £1,000. The description
proved very promising and once I make my mind up about something I
go for it there and then, so I bought it. This proved a good
decision.

The
Aries was way down south – and west – in Dartmouth.

I
have always considered EBay to be rife with rogues, not least due
to the explanations people give for flogging whatever it is: the UK
seems to be awash with expensive electronics and valuable antiques
which have been given as ‘unwanted presents’. What do you do when
someone gives you that 17” MacBook Pro that you never really
wanted? EBay it!

A
couple of phone calls with the seller, Marcus, restored my
confidence in human nature. When he found out how far away we
lived, he advised that his girlfriend’s boat was for sale on the
river and that we would be welcome to stay aboard.

I
said that it was no problem, we would find a hotel for the night.
Marcus sounded dubious.

Within a few minutes of that call I had
spoken to all of the hotels in the area. None would take a booking
for just one night at the weekend, and all cost a fortune. I called
Marcus back, rather sheepishly, and was most glad that I
did.

Not
only did we have a boat to ourselves in the middle of the River
Dart, but Marcus lent us his work boat to get around and in the
evening we joined Marcus and his girlfriend, Freya, for dinner at
the local pub. They had both recently completed trans-Atlantic
voyages – the Aries had steered Marcus the whole way in the 1870s –
style timber Cornish fishing smack which he had hand-built using
only traditional methods.

We
got ourselves both an excellent and recently re-built Aries and
loads of advice on how to use and maintain it and go about the
voyage in general. The key trick with Aries is to give them a daily
dose of 3-in-1 oil to keep everything well lubricated. “Just throw
the stuff on,” Marcus advised.

In
addition to the Aries we have a Raymarine GPX Tillerpilot. This
formidable bit of kit, which also cost about £1,000, can handle
virtually any conditions, but uses a fair bit of battery power. We
tend to use the Tillerpilot when motoring or in very light winds. I
have heard many others advise on both systems.

If I
could only afford one, I would go for the wind vane over and above
anything which uses electrical power. Some people complete long
ocean passages with electric autopilots alone, but batteries can
fail, motors burn out and microchips malfunction, so this seems
like a high-risk strategy to me, to say nothing of the huge power
demand.

Aries
attached! Maybe not quite dead centre, but it works beautifully
once everything is balanced and tuned.

Aries at work, on passage to
Madeira, 12th October 2011.

Electrical Power

Aside from the electric autopilot, when in use,
the key drains on our batteries are the Waeco chest fridge, which
we keep lashed in place on the saloon floor, and the GPS
chartplotter and radar. Our cabin lights are all either halogen or
LED, so use little power. The mast-head tricolour, by contrast,
seems to use loads and I would love to replace it with an LED
tricolour at some point. The only reason I did not do so during the
re-fit was because they cost the better part of £500.

To
minimise power consumption, we only use radar when really necessary
and on passage keep the GPS chartplotter and other instruments
switched off. We switch on a handheld Garmin Etrex GPS receiver
every few hours to get fixes which are noted in the log book and
every few hours plotted onto the paper chart. The intervals between
plotting our position on the chart vary depending on the scale of
the chart. They also become much more frequent as our destination
draws closer!

The
fridge is the one electrical ‘luxury’ which we keep going: so nice
to be able to have fresh dairy products and cold drinks on passage.
Most new boats which I have been on come fitted with an upright
fridge like one might have at home. This is not a good idea as the
cold air will fall out as soon as the door is opened – along, I
suppose, with everything else. A chest fridge is a much better
option.

We
have always had two deep-cycle batteries. One domestic and one
saved for cranking the engine. These were replaced with two AGM
Rolls batteries of 120 amps each. AGMs are more expensive than
conventional lead acid batteries, but they will hold their charge
for longer, charge more quickly and can be discharged down to 20%
without the risk of any damage to the battery. In conventional
batteries the lead plates will buckle if discharged to around 40%,
which greatly reduces the life of the battery. Furthermore, AGMs
should last a good ten years or so and any decrease in performance
will be gradual, whereas conventional lead acid batteries can fail
immediately and without any warning.

The
plan had been to use both 120 amp batteries as the domestics and to
wire in a third AGM battery, of only about 50 amps, but capable of
discharging very high currents, as the cranking battery. At the
time of writing (11th November 2011) we have just
acquired a 90 amp deep cycle lead acid battery after trouble
starting the engine due to flat batteries, so we will use that as
the cranking battery and add the 50 amp to the house bank. The more
battery capacity the better.

Gulliver G is equipped with a
massive Aero6gen wind generator, capable of cranking out 670 amps
per week if the average wind speed hitting the blades is 12 knots.
The efficiency of the windgen is expected to greatly reduce when
sailing downwind due to a reduction in the force of the wind
reaching the blades because of the forward motion of the boat (as
should be the case on the trade wind routes). The plan was always
to add a couple of large solar panels in the Canary Islands, where
I imagined things to be much cheaper (which they are). We got lucky
and were able to buy two second-hand 75-watt panels from another
yacht for €250, regulator included. On a sunny day these should put
out somewhere in the region of 50-70 amps.

Mechanical Propulsion

Gulliver G’s engine is a 28 hp diesel
Yanmar 3GM which was installed about three years before we bought
the boat – so about eight or nine years ago. If the reports are to
be believed, Yanmars are amongst the best yacht engines as they are
very well engineered and designed specifically for yachts, rather
than being marinised versions of engines made for land-based
vehicles. That said, we know of a number of Nicholson 32s whose
original Betas or Watermotas are still ticking along
fine.

We
had to motor a good part of the passage to Madeira and found that
at around 1350 rpm the fuel consumption is under a litre an hour.
As our tank only holds about 75 litres and we carry 40 litres in
jerry cans, this is good news. Averaging 4 knots in calms at those
revs, it gives a range of about 500 nautical miles. Our tank is
miniscule compared to most other cruisers, many carrying 600 to
1,200 litres of fuel. Then again, Gulliver G is a lot
smaller than most other boats going around the Atlantic.

Not
that motoring is fun: the engine is a tight fit for the totally
un-insulated engine compartment. When trying to sleep off-watch in
the saloon with the engine on, it sounds like someone is using a
jackhammer right next to your bed. But, at least the engine works
(touch wood)…

A
lot of money was spent on the engine before we set off. Firstly,
the fuel tank had to come out, receive some welding and get
pressure tested. It transpired that a faint aroma of diesel down
below was just that: diesel. A pinprick in one of the welded seams
at the base of the tank was to blame, and explained why our bilge
water was always red. Getting the problem fixed was brilliant as
Gulliver G now smells completely sweet below decks. It
also cost around £700.

Once
the boat had been re-launched, in May 2011, Gosport Boatyard
carried out a full service. They advised me that the engine mounts
were all rotted through and should be replaced. Needless to say,
they could only be replaced with excruciatingly expensive Yanmar
mounts.

I
was concerned about the potential for seawater to get into the
engine on passage (it being below the water line), so had a new
exhaust pipe fitted with a larger goose-neck and the anti-syphon
valve moved to a higher location whilst all the other work was
going on. The bill came to around £2,500 (excluding the work to the
fuel tank).

All
seemed to go well with the engine until we were about 17 miles out
of A Coruna early one morning. Having spent three and a half days
crossing Biscay in rough and rolly conditions, we knew that a gale
was imminent (all the classic signs: falling barometer, a beautiful
evening with mackerel skies and mares tails, which make tall ships
carry small sails). I was therefore keen to wake Kate with the
sound of the engine and motor in as fast as possible.

I
switched to both batteries and pushed the button. A ‘clank’ but
nothing else. My immediate thought was that the engine was seized.
I pictured the cylinders brimming with water.

I
will go into more detail in my account of Leg 1 of the voyage, but
suffice to say nothing I tried – changing batteries, lifting two of
the three decompression levers on the cylinders, bleeding the
engine – would work. The thing was seized solid as an old iron
sluice.

When
the local boatyard, Marina Seca, came to repair the engine a couple
of weeks after we had returned to the UK, they advised that the
problem was indeed water in the engine and that people generally
found it easier to replace the engine than to repair it.

Once
I had recovered the power of speech, I advised that we were taking
some time out from work to sail across the Atlantic and that there
was no way we could afford to replace the engine. The boatyard
promised to do the best they could as cheaply as
possible.

To
my huge relief, Marina Seca managed to fix the engine. This cost a
little under £1,000, which included a new heavy-duty bilge pump as
the old one had given up the ghost.

Note added 6th February 2012:
after ongoing problems with the engine (mainly difficulty
strating), it now appears to have died completely. We had to sail
into St David’s Bay, Grenada, where a test revealed low compression
in all cylinders as well as more sea water in places it shouldn’t
be! See ‘Repowering Gulliver G’.

Preparing
Ourselves:

This may be described fairly briefly, because
preparing ourselves for the voyage really only involved filling in
some gaps in formal training.

It
has always seemed to me that people who do not own their own boats
tend to hold far more sailing qualifications than those who do. Why
is this? Well, imagine you do not need a license to drive a car.
Upon obtaining a car the more conscientious may undertake some
basic instruction but it probably wouldn’t take most people long to
grasp the basics and so long as one were generally able to drive
oneself around without mishap, it is hard to see why many people
would choose to pursue a formal qualification unless there were
some other compelling reason, such as insurance.

Those who do not have their own cars, I
would surmise, may be more likely to proceed with a full suite of
lessons, right through to getting a license, as the lessons
themselves provide an opportunity to drive and the license
demonstrates, in the absence of one’s own car, that one is able to
drive. Useful for hiring a car or borrowing some else’s.

To
apply the same logic to boats: in the UK no formal qualifications
at all are required to skipper a small sailing boat. Most
boatowners are, however, likely to have undertaken a basic
qualification, such as RYA Dayskipper, for their own peace of mind
and that of their insurers. Royal Yachting Association
qualifications are recognised as industry-standard throughout the
UK and much of the world. Dayskipper will teach the essentials,
like rules of the road, what the various types of buoy and their
lights mean, how to read a chart and figure out one’s position on
it, what direction to steer the boat in to get to where one wants
to go, and tidal heights and streams. For a great many boat owners
there is simply no imperative to progress the formal qualifications
beyond a certain basic point.

The
opposite is true for non-boatowners. Working their way up through
the RYA syllabus (which goes something like Dinghies, Competent
Crew, Dayskipper, Coastal Skipper, Yachtmaster Offshore,
Yachtmaster Ocean) is often the best opportunity that they will
have in the initial years to go sailing, probably in sailing school
boats. Once they have the higher qualifications, this simplifies
yacht charter and is also likely to open up opportunities to crew
for those who do have their own boats (and who, despite their own
lack of formal qualifications, are likely to be interested in the
level attained by new crew).

And
so it was that having obtained the Dayskipper qualification shortly
after we bought Gulliver G and despite best intentions to
the contrary, I had never completed any more of the RYA syllabus
and Kate had not done any of it.

Not
wishing to take risks through gaps in knowledge, and thinking that
we would require further qualifications in order to get insurance
for the voyage, we decided to pursue further qualifications over
Winter 2010/11. I did Yachtmaster Coastal/Offshore theory by way of
evening classes in London, immediately followed by the Yachtmaster
Offshore practical during a frigid week of thick snow and frozen
ropes in November.

Although Kate had not done Dayskipper, I
felt that Yachtmaster Offshore theory was well within her grasp and
she did that over three weekends at the Cruising Association in
London, whilst I worked on the boat. As expected, Kate aced the
Yachtmaster Offshore.

The
final step was for us both to do the Yachtmaster Ocean theory
course, again at the Cruising Association in London. As with the
other courses, a great aspect of these classes was the other people
on the course. Unlike the preceding courses, though, we found that
almost everyone on the Yachtmaster Ocean had their own boats with
plans of long-distance cruising. The bulk of the course is taken
with celestial navigation, which involves lots of number-crunching,
leafing through tables of figures in minute font and some
trigonometry. At times I found it hard to see the wood for the
trees, but Kate is much more a numbers-person than I and was soon
firmly established as teacher’s pet, regularly assisting in the
instruction of the rest of the class.

For
me, the most nerve-wracking of the courses was the Yachtmaster
Offshore practical, where one’s boat-handling skills really come
under the microscope.

Because Gulliver G was laid-up
ashore when I wanted to get the ticket, November 2010, I choose to
do the course with the sailing school with whom I had done the
theory, First Class Sailing. For the four of us taking the course,
it involved three days of preparation with a sailing instructor and
two days of examination with a separate examiner. The boat was a 37
foot Jenneau, very different to Gulliver G being a
light-weight fin keeler with a wheel. All went well for my
examination until it came to picking up a mooring buoy under sail
at night in an icy force five. Here the difference in performance
between the Jenneau and a heavy long-keeler, low freeboard, vessel
like Gulliver G came to the fore as I found that in the
Jenneau I kept releasing the sails too early. As soon as they were
de-powered the wind would take the bows and we would rapidly swing
away from the buoy which had been so tantalisingly close.
Gulliver G is the opposite: heading into the wind to pick
up a buoy, one has to de-power relatively early, otherwise momentum
will carry the boat straight past the buoy.

The
Yachtmaster Offshore practical was a week which I will always hold
dear for the company of the three others on the course and the very
colourful characters of our instructor and examiner. A favourite
line from the latter, who had won his handicap in that year’s Round
The Island Race in his Twister 28 (which he had sailed around Cape
Horn a few years earlier) with his three sons as crew: “My sons
think they’re better sailors than me. They’re not.”.

Despite coming in for some due criticism on
picking up a buoy under sail, I got my ticket. But, the Jenneau
handles so very differently to a Nicholson 32 that were I to do it
again I would instead get a day’s preparation from someone who
knows boats like mine and then get an examiner to come aboard my
own boat for the exam. Doing the exam on your own boat would carry
two key advantages: (i) more opportunities to impress the examiner
by showing off your boat handling skills and (ii) quite possibly
learning one or two tips and tricks which will help you get more
out of your boat.

Money:

The Refit

We had paid for the work on the boat as we went
along. During Gulliver G’s refit the respectable salary I
made as in-house counsel was re-distributed amongst Gosport’s
chandleries quicker than it came into my account. Realising the
scale of our spending, the chandlers very kindly discounted our
bills. Even so, some careful juggling of credit card and overdraft
facility was required on a few occasions to avoid getting
completely maxed-out.

One
wet Saturday morning on her way into London for her Yachtmaster
Offshore exam, Kate wrote off her BMW Z3. Fortunately Kate was
unharmed and no-one else was involved. More importantly she still
made it to the exam, her performance in which was impressively
unaffected by the morning’s diversions. Every cloud has a silver
lining; in this case it was the insurance pay-out, which covered
the rigging work.

I
didn’t keep track of how much the refit cost, preferring not to
think about it, but the damage was somewhere in the region of £15 -
£20,000. Of course, it would have been quite easy to spend much
more – more batteries, more gadgets, a watermaker, all that jazz,
but fortunately for my bank account I simply did not have time to
buy any more stuff!

As
soon as Gulliver G left Gosport in the early morning mist
and light of 3rd June 2011, bound for A Coruna via
Cherbourg, spending declined drastically. Somehow we managed to
clear all debts (except for the mortgage, of course!) before
setting off on our voyage.

The Voyage

Before we set off some friends asked about budget
– one knew of a couple who had budgeted £1,000 per month for a two
year trip and spent the whole lot in the first year. Another friend
mentioned a couple who had spent something like £1,500 per
month.

We
hope to keep spending far lower than that. Indeed, unless the
engine needs a complete overhaul or something goes seriously awry
with the rig I am not sure how it would even be possible to spend
that much. We have found that even the smartest looking boats are
very cost conscious and all serious cruisers spend the vast
majority of their nights (when not on passage) at anchor, almost
always at no charge. Note added 6th Februaury 2012:
the engine needs rather more than a complete overhaul! It needs
replacing. These things are sent to try us…

So,
the main costs should be food and drink, punctuated by the odd fuel
or laundry bill, the occasional marina stay, chandlery visit and,
at some point no doubt a haul-out for scrubbing off and
anti-fouling. On passage we will not be able to spend anything.
Even if a rather generous £10 per day is allowed for food and drink
(£5 per day is far more likely), monthly spending should not be
more than £500.

For
a few years we had taken advantage of the low interest rate to
overpay our mortgage. Whilst away we are paying the mortgage using
the overpayment fund, which should be good for the better part of
20 months, freeing up the income which we make through letting the
house to cover costs.

The
house required some work to get it up to scratch for letting.
Fortunately this was not expensive as it mainly consisted of
packing away whatever nick-nacks, curios and clothes we could not
bear to chuck, building a summerhouse to put most of it in (the
other half, including a few hundred weight of books, going into our
ever faithful and increasingly less studious study). From having
spent all of our ‘spare’ time on preparing Gulliver G, as
soon as we returned from A Coruna focus turned to the house and we
certainly needed the full three months before going back out to the
boat to get it all done. I dread to think how much of 2011 I spent
brandishing either a paint brush or a roller.

By
the time we finished clearing and cleaning and painting and panting
the house looked far nicer than it ever had in all our years of
living there!

In
Conclusion:

By the time all preparations were complete we
were so exhausted that it is hardly surprising that we spent most
of our first week back on Gulliver G doing pretty much
nothing.

I am
slightly stunned when I think back to the frenetic activity which,
over the course of a year, went into preparing for this adventure,
whilst also balancing our demanding jobs and ensuring that we had
some time free for friends and family. It was an absolutely
non-stop onslaught of action and an interesting experience in
itself. Everything just kind of happened.

The
value of immovable deadlines in the project of preparing for an
Atlantic Circuit in Gulliver G showed it’s
worth.

Conversely, now that the adventure has begun
we have no particular deadlines which may explain why at the time
of writing (11th November 2011) we have been at anchor
in Puerto de Naos, Isla de Lanzarote, Isla Canarias, for 9 days
doing very little except writing, perhaps a little excessively (for
which I hope the reader will forgive me), about the journey before
the voyage.

Gulliver Gin A
Coruna, 18th June 2011. We sailed her onto this pontoon
after engine failure and a Biscay gale.